Bloodline
by arcessita
Summary: Voldemort won, closed the borders, and settled down to a life of being catered to, but there are those who resistwith subversive literature, smuggling, and the clever use of biochemistry. Abandoned due to HBP. See first chapter notes for details
1. Not exactly the status quo

**Bloodline**

Disclaimer: To my eternal annoyance, I am not being paid to write fanfiction. If I were, I would quit my job, drop out of school, and spend the next twenty years breeding plotbunnies. Er, anyway. JKR owns the characters and the settings you recognize, and well as what's "really" going to happen. She's very kindly allowed loons like me to play with them, and We Praise Her For It. I seem to recall that the movie people have some sort of rights, too, so genuflections to them as well.

Chapter Description: The major players are introduced, plans rise and fail, and Hermione has a little problem.

Author's Note: I have entirely too much fun using fanfic cliches dipped in sarcasm--ten points for each one you can spot! ;)

* * *

The problem with running a resistance movement, Severus Snape thought irritably, was that the existing regime just wasn't that bad for most people. True, the wizarding world _was_ run by an evil overlord with dreams of everlasting life and an unsettling penchant for indiscriminant torture, but for the average witch or wizard, there really wasn't all that much to complain about. Unless you found yourself the subject of one of the Dark Lord's pet breeding projects, life went on much as it had before. And that, of course, was the crux of his problem. As if allowing himself to be placed in charge of a school full of self-important little snots wasn't enough, he had been ordered to continue the Snape line and provide Voldemort with another brood of faithful followers.

His day improved a bit at the expense of Charlie Gibbons and Caroline Derwent-Jones, a pair of third years who had decided to brighten their own days by casting former-Unforgivables at their classmates in the hall. He would have liked to expel them for their rank disobedience, but they were Bloodline children and virtually untouchable. Deciding to leave them in suspense about their actual punishment, he fixed them with a black glare.

"Explain yourselves."

They squirmed in their seats. _Excellent_. Miss Derwent-Jones made a few gulping noises, and Mister Gibbons developed a sudden interest in his shoelaces.

"Well? Speak up, I don't have all day." He did, actually. Paperwork was miniscule now that the Ministry had been "reorganized", and his private projects were, to be frank, not going well.

"Um, well, I, er, we..."

"Yes?"

"Wewerejustpracticing," Gibbons squeaked.

"And you felt that _despite my clear warnings on the subject_ the hallway was the appropriate place for it?"

They avoided his gaze. Miss Derwent-Jones found her voice first, having apparently decided to brazen it out. She jerked her chin up, and met his eye with only a small flinch.

"Ashton offended me, and I was well within my rights to put him in his place. He is only half-blood, after all."

"Your rights, Miss Jones? I imagine one could count stupidity as a right."

Her nostrils flared as she huffed, offended. Gibbons only looked confused.

He sighed. "Mister Ashton is also a member of Hufflepuff, is he not? Would you enjoy waking up to a face full of boils?"

As a threat, it worked nicely. The girl looked ready to cry, and the boy shifted uncomfortably.

"I leave you to the consequences of your actions, then. You will report to Mister Filch after dinner every day until the next Hogsmeade weekend. Now get back to your dormitories."

They ran. He heard a squeak of dismay, and then Filch entered. He nearly chuckled at the irony. Nearly.

"Can I help you, Argus?"

The caretaker tossed a brightly-colored package onto his desk. "Contraband," he said. Emblazoned across the front of the bag was 'AIRHEADS'.

"Crickman wanted to feed them to the whole of Gryffindor!" Filch rubbed his hands in anticipation.

"Very well. Have him come to my office tomorrow morning immediately after breakfast."

_Interesting_, he thought, as the echoes of Argus' footfalls on the circular stair grew fainter. Somehow, Muggle candy was getting through the barriers---if he played his cards right, there might be a way to reach the five outside. He smiled to himself, and began writing.

---

Harry Potter was in a piss-poor mood. His flatmates had finally tired of his ranting and had turned him out to spew his vitriol on someone else. _Spew_, he mused. Hermione's passion for lost causes had certainly transferred well to their new station. He could not imagine how anyone else could see the curse that had stripped their magic from them as a "temporary inconvenience", but Hermione did. She poked and prodded their compatriots out of bed every morning to act as guinea pigs in her experiments, ignoring groans of protest from her former professors, whose age had caught up with them without magic to sustain their good health. Clever of him, Harry thought, to sentence his worst enemies to the discomforts of old age, slowly sapping their will to resist.

Still, Voldemort had always underestimated Muggles, and they'd done their best to exploit that weakness. Too bad they'd---he'd---been caught. He grimaced again at the thought of his failure. He'd been so sure that the contact was clean, that the plan was flawless. Honestly, how could he have predicted there would be a magical Mafia? Well, Hermione certainly had. He touched his ears gently, remembering her shriek of rage when she'd found out what he'd done. He'd been justified in yelling back---after all, _he_ was the one who'd suffered for it, and he'd be damned if he'd undergo another interrogation.

He spotted a trendy café at the end of the block. He'd sit, he thought, and write it out. Maybe he could make sense of what had gone wrong. Maybe he could get Hermione off his back long enough to start a new scheme with the lessons he'd learned. Hey, and if all else failed, he could disguise a few names and sell it as his memoirs. For the first time in days, Harry smiled. It was a sneering, self-deprecating smile, but it was definitely there. He bought a mocha and set pen to napkin.

---

"Pedigree genetics is anything but an exact science," Professor Callahan told the class. "As you've read in your textbooks, hemophilia spread quickly through the royal families of Europe, appearing first in the children of Queen Victoria. The explanation commonly given is that she (or one of her parents) was born with a spontaneous mutation, but---and this is the difficulty with pedigrees---there are...other...explanations." He wiggled his eyebrows, and the class laughed appreciatively.

The joke was lost on Hermione, who was scribbling madly in the notebook in front of her. As she wrote, she ran the tips of her unoccupied fingers over her forehead, worrying at an unseen mark. She could always feel the brand on her forehead. Omega. Symbol of the Frenum Copulaque. Outward mark of her stymied magic. She did look up when the class began filing out. Time to go to the lab.

It was highly unusual for an undergraduate to have control over her own project, much less dedicated lab space, but Dumbledore had friends in high places. _Very_ high places. Anyone, it seemed, could get lab space with a healthy government grant to her name.

"Morning, Mione!" Amanda Bertram called. Dr. Baldwin's overworked technician had a bottomless supply of good cheer, a trait which alternately amused and annoyed the collection of graduate students and post-docs who made use of her talents. Hermione gave a friendly wave as she passed Amanda's bench.

"Your blood samples are in the cold room," Amanda told her. "I went ahead and thawed them for you when they came in."

"Thanks, Amanda. What would I do without you?"

"Sleep in the lab, I imagine!" she laughed.

It wasn't really a joke, Hermione mused as she prepared her slides. She'd avoided all-nighters so far, but she knew the minute she had a breakthrough, she might as well take up residence.

The blood samples were, as promised, on ice in the cold room. They were labeled with the four indexes Hermione had spent her first year without magic developing. Two dealt with heritage---wizarding percentage to six generations and percentage and type of any nonhuman ancestry---and the other two dealt with magical ability. The ancestry indices had been easy to develop, once she discovered an abandoned project to cross-reference Muggle and wizarding birth records, but quantifying magical ability had been a murky business of guesswork and supposition. In the end, though, she had compiled a fairly extensive set of pedigrees, and short of exhumation there was little she could do to acquire bodily samples of the individuals she had tracked.

She let her mind wander as she went through her routine: aliquot and label the samples, mark two for tissue culture, two for permanent storage, and send the rest to the minus-80 freezer. So far her results had been precisely nil. There were no visible structures in the blood that might account for its ritual power, and it would be months before the genetic analysis could be expected to show anything. Still, she had high hopes. She and Ron had joined forces to write a program that would (hopefully) identify likely genes---ones that were active in magical samples and inactive in Muggle or cursed ones. She smiled at the thought of Ron. Who would have guessed that losing his magic would land him in a place where his talents could really shine?

"Good morning."

She looked up from her work, and the whole world collapsed to a single point. Pale, pale skin, shining in the florescent glare, stretched tight over a skull, shot through with blue veins. It was him, she knew it, and she stepped forward.

He turned around. "Hermione? Are you okay?"

She blinked. China blue eyes, not red. There, she was steadier.

"You shaved your head," she said, unnecessarily. She was focusing on Tom now, who had a normal human nose and black eyebrows, and the dizzy feeling was beginning to fade.

"Big change," he muttered, running a hand over his scalp. "Do you think it looks okay?"

She managed a smile. "Looks great. Very modern." He seemed relieved, unloading his tubes from the centrifuge wordlessly. He shifted on his feet as he worked, and the soft sound of his jeans rubbing together kept time in the quiet room. He left a few minutes later with his hands shoved deep in his pockets, as if to keep them from reaching for hair he no longer had.

Without Tom's anxious presence making the small space uncomfortably public, Hermione could think more clearly. The last time this had happened was at Halloween, when Ron came home wearing custom contacts. His "Voldemort costume" unnerved them all, but judging by the others' unsteady humor, she was the only one who'd actually felt the pull. She'd been much worse that time, she remembered---her death grip on the counter was the only thing that kept her from kneeling before those red eyes. This time, at least, she'd been able to wrest some control away from the feelings. It infuriated her, this violation of her mind, this foreign desire to obey her worst enemy. What did he want with her mind, anyway, when he'd closed the doors to the wizarding world?

She glared at her blood samples. She _would_ remove this curse, whether she had magic at her disposal or not.

---

It had begun with Dumbledore eating a lemon drop. Granted, a great many things had begun that way, but what made this one special was the far-flung effects it had in my life, both for good and for evil.

Well, no. That wasn't the beginning, really. Dumbledore's not-so-subtle hint had just been the resolution of a very big and loud fight with Ron. Like most blowups between friends, it had begun with something really stupid.

"God-DAMNIT!" Ron had yelled. "If you don't stop moaning about not saving the world and get a fucking job already, I'll evict you myself! The least you can do, O-Living-One, is make a contribution to the rent!"

Okay, maybe it wasn't that stupid.

I argued with him, of course. After all, I was supposed to be the savior of the wizarding world, I had failed at my one true purpose, life had no meaning, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And when I had replayed my whole sob story, I really expected him to leave me alone.

Ha. I had forgotten that Ron Weasley was raised by Molly Weasley, and thus was no slouch in the guilt-tripping OR the yelling department. Needless to say, he made my ears ring until I got my sorry ass out of bed and started looking for a job.

Harry laughed over his account. It seemed much less traumatic like that. Of course, he hadn't gotten to his great failure yet, but it was time to call Hermione and make amends. He supposed he did still resent that she had called him on his bad planning and berated him for it, but it had been wrong of him to question her loyalty. If there was anything he could always count on from Hermione, it was caring. Yes, it was definitely time to apologize.

---

Difficulty hearing often accompanied Hermione's absorption in a particularly messy problem, so it wasn't until Amanda was hovering over her shoulder that she understood what she was saying.

"Mione, Harry's on the phone. He says it's an emergency."

She snatched it from the technician's hand.

"Harry, what's wrong?"

"You have to get here now-Dumbledore's collapsed!"

"Okay, I'll be there as soon as I can. The hospital number's on the fridge; call them right away."

"I will. Please, just hurry."

He hung up.

She grabbed her bag, and the phone rang again.

"Baldwin lab."

"Hermione?"

"Harry? I thought you were calling the hospital. What happened?"

"Hospital? Who's sick? What's going on?"

There was a long pause.

"Hermione?"

"Whatever you do, Harry, do not go home. Someone called from the flat with your voice. He said that Dumbledore collapsed and wanted me to come right away."


	2. Never could follow orders

Chapter 2: Never Could Follow Orders

Author's Note: I am in the process of rewriting this story. **This chapter has not yet been reworked.** While the plot will not be changed, please bear in mind that the writing is not up to my standards. If you have any suggestions as to how I could improve my work, please feel free to review or email me directly. Thanks!

Disclaimer: see Chapter 1

* * *

"I hate going to court," Severus mumbled. Entering Voldemort's presence required even more debasement than it had in the secretive days just after his "rebirth". These days, kissing the hem of the Dark Lord's robe was only the beginning of the rituals he required.

"Rise, my vassal."

Severus stood, his knees protesting. He schooled his features to humble neutrality—though reasonable, his annoyance was unlikely to help his already miserable situation.

"Lucius, bring in the bride." Voldemort grinned; he was always quite cheerful when he was getting his way.

As Malfoy brushed past, he sent a condescending smirk Snape's way. _Wait till it's Draco, Lucky. Just you wait._ He threw open the doors with his usual flair, returning presently with a small, veil-covered figure. Severus's morbid imagination flickered through a host of sickening possibilities as the pair approached.

"Time to thank me, Sev," Lucius drawled, and with a flourish he removed the veil. It was Hermione Granger.

---

Harry had never been good at following orders, no matter how smart or well-meant they were. Over the years he had come to the conclusion that if you were going to disobey Hermione, it was best to get Ron in on it. So it was that he ducked into his best friend's cubicle less than an hour after the phone call.

Ron had looped one leg over the arm of his office chair and was twisting back and forth in it, grimacing at a screen full of gibberish. He was mumbling something about local variables when Harry tapped his shoulder.

"Hey, mate. What's up?" Ron's chair squealed as he twirled around to face him.

"Got a minute? The old boys came to play."

"Did they now?" He stood and looked over into the next cubicle. "Jerry, I'll be back in five." A grunt came from the distracted Jerry, and Ron showed him into a conference room down the hall.

The minute the door clicked shut, Ron's lazy demeanor dropped abruptly. "What happened?"

Harry went through the conversation word by word as Ron paced.

"She's wrong, you know. They were looking for her, not you."

"What?"

"Why else would they call her lab and give her a good reason to come home?"

"Oh."

Ron pulled a tattered little address book from his back pocket, rifled through it for Hermione's number, and picked up the conference room's phone.

"Nope," he said a moment later. "She's gone."

---

"She's been drugged!" Severus knew his anger was palpable, but he was too shocked to care.

Malfoy began to laugh. "Sympathy for a traitor, Sev? Should we have served her tea? Returned her wand, perhaps?"

The unfortunate Miss Granger stared more or less through him with glassy eyes—it was clear she was aware of none of this—and Voldemort's smile grew even brighter.

Was this his punishment for a lifetime of calling Dumbledore's twinkle evil? To be faced with that same sparkle in the Dark Lord's serpent eyes?

"First things first. Severus, take Miss Granger's hand. I'm giving you control of her mark so you can keep her in line once the potion wears off. _Severo copulam transfero!_"

Severus felt a small corner of his mind open and a pulsating warmth begin to emanate from it. Then the world went black.

---

He awoke in a rose garden. The sky had the deep turquoise cast of early evening, and the air seemed to hold its breath in anticipation of nightfall. The eerie timelessness was quite literal, he thought with trepidation when he spotted a fountain nearby. A stream of water hung in mid-air, and the answering ripples could have been made of glass.

He felt a sharp tug on his wrist. 

He looked down. 

Shit. 

In a sickening parody of the Japanese love-ribbon, a band of black and silver circled his wrist and trailed off past the garden's wrought iron gates into the heavy mist outside. Gathering the first few feet, he followed it out of the garden.

For what seemed like hours, he trekked though the dense fog, noting the peculiarities of his guide-line. The nature of the Frenum Copulaque, though it was derived from the caster, found form in the subject's mind, and the representation Hermione's subconscious had chosen was not giving him hope. The wristband was a soft embroidered reflection of the chain that formed the bond: links shaped like small silver snakes, joined in mouth-to-tail circles, woven through with a black velvet ribbon that glistened the darkest of reds when the evening light caught it. The chain was to be expected—Voldemort had declared he was giving Severus control—and he rather liked the little snakes. The ribbon was the problem. The black-red represented a twisted form of love, a need, imposed by the spell, for the forceful dominance he was expected to mete out. Severus felt ill.

At length, the fog lifted, revealing a mausoleum of white stone set into a barren hillside. A new tension in the chain told him she was near.

---

After so many years of protecting Harry, Hermione found herself ill-prepared to defend her own life. She had only intended to peek inside the window, to assure herself that Albus was safe, but the sight of twenty Death Eaters milling about her living room had been a bit too much for her. Her left foot slipped, she skidded a few branches down, and the vibrating twigs tapped politely against the window.

"Well, Miss Granger. I must admit, I thought Muggles entered their homes by means of the door." The silky baritone of Lucius Malfoy cut through the double-paned window as easily as if it were paper. An idle part of her brain wondered what charm he had used, and she squelched the thought with a reminder to her brain to get busy. She felt like a deer caught in the headlights—a very stupid and clumsy deer. Still, she bristled at Malfoy's mockery. An instinctive grab at her sleeve cost her precious time before she remembered she no longer had a wand. It was just enough for the two closest figures to haul her bodily through the window. _So much for underestimating Muggles_, she thought. _It's not a weakness if it's **true**_. She settled instead for glaring up at him. What could he possibly want from them? If they were here to kill the traitors, or torture them, they would have started by now. _What the hell_, she thought, and put the question to Malfoy.

Of course, he just laughed. "You have two choices," he told her, drawing two vials from his robes. "You can drink this one, and save us all from having to listen to your tiresome Gryffindor bluster, or this one"—he waggled the left one—"goes in the radiator. I don't think Minerva McGonagall's prize student needs to be told what that would do." He raised an eyebrow then, lifting one vial, then the other, as if he were actually giving her a choice.

"Fine, drug me," she said, refusing to play along.

They did.

When she awoke something seemed terribly wrong, but she couldn't put a finger on it. The twilight sky might have been pretty, but the air was still and cold. She looked down. Well, that explained the cold. She curled her arms around her legs a she sank to the floor, and a tug at her neck made her freeze. She was collared. Her panic rising, she checked the lead. Silver chain. Black-red... oh god. "This is not happening. Not again. Not again."

The shivering, naked figure rocked back and forth on the bare white floor, repeating her mantra: "This is not happening—This is not happening—"

---

The Frenum Copulaque was created in the mess following the Roman invasion of the Hellenistic world. Long after the Muggles had settled into a workable occupation, the Greek and Roman wizards were still at each other's throats. Dark spells had been created on both sides, and the wizarding world stood in serious danger of anarchy. The Roman equivalent of the Minister of Magic at the time was Gaius Cato Pisces, and he appealed to the governing bodies to engage the denizens of the magical realm in a contest. The winning strategy would be used to make peace in the eastern empire, and the magus responsible would be remembered as the savior of wizard-kind. The winner, of course, had been Merlin, but one other strategy had worked—with chilling efficiency. The inventor was a small Egyptian named Osiri, with long fingers and a voice like wind through dry reeds. Contemporary writers suggest he had suffered some horror at the hands of his Greek masters early in his life (he was nearly two hundred years old when he presented his solution), but they seem desperate to account for his cruelty.

Among other things, he proposed an early recipe for Veritaserum and laid the theoretical foundation for the creation of Dementors, but his punishment for traitors garnered the most outrage. Osari had developed a complex fusion of snaring and domination spells, a sort of choke-chain on the subject's magical ability. While the holder of the leash could not control the subject's gift directly, he could govern how much magical ability he could touch. Ensuring correct behavior took little more, Osari wrote. His "experiments" showed that wizards long seperated from their gift slipped into deep depression, and any hope of the gift returning generated a desperate desire to obey. Voldemort had been deeply impressed.

It was one bit of research Severus had been glad to be excluded from. He didn't want to think about the victims (er, subjects) among the lower ranks of the Death Eaters, or about Bellatrix Lestrange's combination of already dubious sanity with control of five broken minds she'd been unable to get rid of. Bella's breakdown had been the only thing to convince the Dark Lord not to leash his Inner Circle, and even then Malfoy had had to talk fast to save his own neck from the collar. In the end, though, the research had been abandoned, and Severus had prayed he'd never hear of it again.

He certainly never thought he'd be the one to recommend it.


	3. Rescue mission

Chapter 3: Rescue Mission

Author's Note: I am in the process of rewriting this story. **This chapter has not yet been reworked.** While the plot will not be changed, please bear in mind that the writing is not up to my standards. If you have any suggestions as to how I could improve my work, please feel free to review or email me directly. Thanks!

Disclaimer: see Chapter 1

* * *

"For the last time, no, we are not going back to the flat." Ron massaged the bridge of his nose as he prepared for another round of argument from Harry, who had taken to pacing up and down the room. Surprisingly, though, Harry was silent. 

"What?" Ron asked, noticing the look of intense concentration on his friend's face.

"I just had an idea." He sat down across from Ron and held up his hand. "One," he said, tapping his forefinger, "if they've come for Hermione, and no one's at the flat, then they must have taken her somewhere else. Two: the only enemies she has are wizards (they did use my voice), but three: all the borders between the magical and Muggle worlds are closed. Conclusion A"—Ron snorted—"this is an official kidnapping. Conclusion B: they've taken her into the magical world."

"Conclusion B doesn't follow. We have no idea why she was taken—somewhere else in the Muggle world might have been acceptable."

"And," Harry added triumphantly, ignoring him, "I know someone who can get us across the barriers."

"Correction—you've _made bitter enemies_ with someone who can get us across the barriers."

"Still, the contact is there. We can—" 

Ron cut him off, standing up. "We can go get the other two, is what we can do. We need to know if Dumbledore's all right before we go running off to see people who will probably want to kill you on sight."

"Oh."

---

Ron had changed a lot, Harry mused as they drove in silence to the library. Had he been so wrapped up in his own life that he hadn't noticed his best friend, well, growing up? Maybe so. He didn't want to remember the early days, before Ron had browbeaten him out of his depression, but that must have been the start of it. All of them had been changed—they'd all lost a parent when Molly Weasley fell—but Harry knew it was the worst for Ron. At least he and Hermione had known how to survive as Muggles. But somehow Ron had weathered it better than anyone could have expected. Harry would never in a million years forget walking downstairs to see the boy who had yelled to him over the "fellytone" surfing the Internet like he'd been born with a mouse in his hand. From his discovery of a simulated chess game it'd been a short step, first to "how do they do that?" and then to writing his own program. What Ron had later told him was called "game theory" came naturally, and with the extra boost of confidence he got when his first applet was well-received, he'd landed a job. And although he'd never say so to Ron, Harry was fairly certain that his own breakdown had forced Ron to take on the responsibilities that shaped him into the adult Harry had to admit he was.

Harry sighed, and wondered what the hell he'd done with his own life.

---

Minerva McGonegall was very unhappy, Albus Dumbledore noted as she stormed toward him.

"Look what you've done to this keyboard," she whispered harshly, thrusting the offending object at him. "I don't know how many times I've told you not to eat candy at the computer—you are not a wizard anymore, and I'm no more capable of casting a cleansing charm than you are."

She paused for breath, and he broke in smoothly before she could continue, "My apologies, Minerva. I forgot." He added a smile that back at Hogwarts would have calmed her considerably. However, the Minerva McGonegall who stood before him was afflicted with arthritis in her knees, frustrated at the waste of her talents, and possessed of a temper that was stretched to the breaking point by ungrateful library patrons.

"Out!" she cried, unheeding of the eyes that turned to look at them, "Out of my library! And don't come back until you've learned how to wash your hands!"

She was brandishing the sticky keyboard in a threatening gesture that was coming uncomfortably close to his head, so Albus beat a hasty retreat.

The whatever-they-weres standing sentinel by the exit caught a book he'd forgotten to check out, and he spent a few extra minutes at the circulation desk, wondering if Minerva's glare really could burn holes in his back. He had never been so happy to be a Muggle. 

As it turned out, though, it was a good thing he'd been delayed. As he strode toward his car, he spotted Ron and Harry on their way into the library.

"Ah, just a moment, children," he said as they re-entered the library together, "let me stop at the bathroom and wash my hands."

---

Severus Snape associated compassion with two things. One was his sister Cecelia, and the other was swiftly approaching death. He had not thought of Cecelia in many years, and in the last twenty, that second association had carefully removed the emotion from the better part of his psyche. Which was why its sudden return hit him the way it did.

Upon entering the white mausoleum, he had spotted Miss Granger immediately. She huddled in the far corner, a pitiful, quivering pile of pale flesh and copious amounts of brown hair. He removed his cloak as he approached her, feeling quite thankful that it had been included as part of his dream-essence.

"Here," he said, holding it out to her.

She looked up at him then, and damn if it wasn't Cecelia's eyes he saw, full of pain and confusion, of anger and accusation. And damned if he didn't deserve every bit of it. Again.

"Miss Granger," he snapped, "I trust you would like to cover yourself."

Her eyes blazed at that. She snatched the cloak out of his hands as she stood, clutching it against her body.

"Turn around," she snapped back.

He obliged, but not before glaring down at her with the most condescending expression he could manage. He hated feeling guilty.

---

Could it get any worse, Hermione fumed as she wrapped herself as tightly as she could in the voluminous cloak. The same bastard she'd trusted because Dumbledore had trusted him, who should have never been trusted with anything, who had turned up, smirking and swooping, at the Voldemort's side, and who'd used that same silky, satisfied voice she would always associate with "Detention, Miss Granger" to tell him how to take away their magic—that man was the one she'd been _given_—she shuddered at the word—to? It was then that a sudden memory brought her train of thought to an abrupt halt.

She'd been standing, more or less, in the hallway outside Voldemort's courtroom, flanked by two Dementors and, accordingly, feeling truly awful. Lucius Malfoy had entered in conversation with Snape, and they'd taken seats on a bench a few meters away. She could feel their eyes on her, cold and mildly amused, as if she were a particularly interesting species of bug. She clung to their conversation, a link to life away from Dementors, straining to hear every word.

At first she'd been angry at the tone, once she realized they were discussing Dumbledore's fate as if it were a long-standing, but ultimately unimportant, debate between friends. But she listened, and not only for the respite it gave her from the soul-suckers standing guard over her.

"While it would be highly amusing to see the old fool sunk to the level of a Muggle," Malfoy was saying casually, "it would clearly make more sense just to kill him. I'm sure we could all derive some amusement from the manner of his death, and I don't see how leashing his magic could adequately protect us from his constant meddling. He's quite well known for it, you know. Surely the celebrations haven't addled your brain that far, Severus?"

"I never drink in public, Lucius." Snape sounded, curiously, every bit as formal as he always had. Perhaps that was as casual as he got, she thought snidely. The Dementors completely ignored the pleasure she got from sarcasm, so she indulged in it as much as possible.

"Perhaps you have forgotten the final detail of my plan. The Dark Lord has already begun to close the borders to the Muggle world. We need only drop our five new Muggles in the middle of London. The borders close, and they are no longer our problem."

Malfoy made some comment about efficiency being "so very boring", but Hermione barely heard it. _Five new Muggles?_ A spark of hope rose within her, and the Dementors feasted as she fell to her knees.

She remembered chanting to herself the rest of the day, "Please just let us live. Let us live." And Snape had made sure they had.

This was better than death, wasn't it? Wasn't it? She shivered, impotent, as he gently touched his fingertips to her collar.

The sensation was rather like using a Portkey. There was a wrenching pull at her navel, then a colorful swirling, and then there was the Dark Lord himself. Voldemort.

He was as pale and snake-like as she remembered, but robed this time in black and silver and seated on what could only be described as a throne. He turned his red eyes on her.

"Welcome back, Hermione Granger. I trust you've had an eventful trip?" _Yes, of course I have_, she thought. _All villains are sarcastic bastards._

"Answer my lord," said the other sarcastic bastard.

"Yes," she bit out.

"_Crucio_," Voldemort said casually.

She saw stars. The pain was everywhere, it was **_endless_**, it was...

It stopped abruptly. She lay on the floor, panting.

"I demand very little of those under my command, but you will find that respect is one of the things I require. Perhaps you have forgotten, living as a Muggle these past five years, so I have taken your disrespect lightly this time. Do not try my patience again." He smiled suddenly, a gruesome twisting of his inhuman features.

"Mine is an easy yoke, is it not, Severus?"

"Yes, my lord."

---

Like hell it is, Severus thought, but he gave the required answer with the required amount of reverence.

"You see how easily it can go, Hermione?" The Dark Lord's voice was gentle now, and Severus was struck once again at how easily this madman could manipulate others. He'd seen it over and over—a bout of the Cruciatus followed by the tender tones of a parent to a child. It got to you, somehow, at a basic and instinctual level. There were still times after all these years that Voldemort could pull from him a desire to obey, so matter how his moral center railed against it. It scared him, deeply.

Miss Granger, meanwhile, was nodding, having risen to her knees in a gesture he suspected had more to do with aching joints than any sort of respect. He was quite familiar with it himself.

"Given the somewhat untried nature of this match, I am attaching Hermione to you as a bound concubine. I will give you a month to ensure her loyalty to me by whatever means you see fit."

With that, Voldemort beckoned Malfoy forward, who produced a document and two quills. Severus signed, noting the usual qualities of a contractual parchment, and handed it to Miss Granger. She hesitated, but signed.

---

He had come alone, as requested. Ron was certain that back at the flat McGonegall was berating Dumbledore for allowing all of them to associate themselves with criminals, and honestly he couldn't blame her. The rather seedy-looking warehouse was an appropriate place to meet the Magical Mafia, as Harry called it, and the darkness of the alleyway was not helping his nerves. Firmly ignoring his questionable surroundings, he knocked on a red door labeled "International Relations." It opened immediately, revealing a small, dingy office inhabited by a plump young woman in a tweed skirt and an overly fussy blouse. She interrupted her typing and peered up at him over her reading glasses. 

"Can I help you, dear?" 

"I have an appointment with Mr Penygroes."

"I see." She paused a moment, chewing her lip. He waited, not daring to breathe.

"What is my name?" she asked finally.

Password, he thought, remember the _password_. "Ms Moneypenny."

"Very good, sir," she said, then switched something under her desk. The bookcase on her left swung into what should have been solid wall, revealing a cramped hallway.

"Thank you," he said, and entered.

The room it led into was equally cramped, lit by a single light bulb hanging from a chain that melted into inky blackness as it neared what he assumed was a ceiling. There was a pitted wooden table directly below it, and a red plastic chair stood nearby. The room was otherwise unoccupied. Squinting at the shadows, he approached the chair cautiously. After poking at it a few times, he sat. Several minutes ticked by, but Ron's eyes never seemed to adjust to the darkness.

Finally, _finally_, a door opened in the shadows in front of him. Two burly men stepped out, followed by a third, who was clearly in charge. The three of them reminded him a bit of Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle, but the two thugs looked considerably more aware than Crabbe or Goyle ever had. The boss moved forward, the brim of his fedora keeping his face in shadow, and the taller of the two thugs produced a chair for him to sit in.

"Well," said the boss. His voice was husky, like that of a longtime smoker. He produced a cigar, and the flare of a match briefly outlined a smooth jaw.

"Well," he said again, apparently in no hurry. "You say you can offer us the protection of a Member of Parliament." He paused, but Ron held firm. He would not talk just to fill the silence.

"Surely you realize that the Muggle authorities are hardly our problem. You've asked for a considerable favor, and there's very little you have to offer us."

Ron opened his mouth, then closed it again.

"However, should we do you this _favor_, you would be in our debt. Deeply so." He paused again. "Do you agree?"

Ron nodded. "We do."

"Then our bargain is sealed." He held out his hand, and they shook. The boss sat back in his chair, took another drag of the cigar, and tipped the brim of his hat.

The light fell on a familiar face. A feminine face. The boss was Millicent Bulstrode.


	4. Preparations

Chapter 4: Preparations

Author's Note: I am in the process of rewriting this story. **This chapter has not yet been reworked.** While the plot will not be changed, please bear in mind that the writing is not up to my standards. If you have any suggestions as to how I could improve my work, please feel free to review or email me directly. Thanks!

If you're interested in updates on how my writing process is going, or you'd like a few cookies from Chapter 5, take a look at my livejournal (go to the memories page, and you'll find all my Bloodline-related posts).

Disclaimer: see Chapter 1

* * *

Severus noted with apprehension the way that Lucius smirked through the rest of the "ceremony". He had looked quite satisfied with himself during the signing, and Severus knew that look quite well, having seen it multiple times over the years they'd known each other. It usually meant that he'd pulled off some scheme, and everyone involved was reacting exactly as he wanted.

The man in question took hold of his elbow the minute they were out of the throne room.

"Excuse us for a moment, Miss Granger," he said with a charming smile. Miss Granger, frankly, did not look impressed, and with some reason.

"Why, Severus, aren't you pleased at what I've done for you?" Lucius wore a look of wide-eyed innocence that wouldn't have fooled Longbottom's toad.

"You know how I feel about other people making my decisions for me. Why do you insist upon provoking me?" Lucius looked as if he liked no pastime better.

"Come, my friend, think of it as a gift!"

"I don't need a gift."

Lucius leaned in close and whispered in his ear. "Don't be silly, Severus. I've seen your porn collection."

He felt himself turning red at that. How did he...?

"Good day, Lucius."

He stormed off in a swirl of black robes, angered beyond all measure at the sound of Lucius's rolling laughter.

A ghost of a smile appeared on the girl's face as he commandeered her elbow.

"Shut up, Miss Granger."

"I didn't say anything."

But she was smirking. Just like Lucius, damn him.

---

Malfoy had probably meant her to overhear their conversation, and to be perfectly honest, the idea of Professor Snape collecting porn boggled the mind. She knew Harry and Ron had their stashes (Ron's had required the purchase of another hard drive), but Snape? He was so uptight, so...Victorian in his mannerisms, his speech. Surely he didn't...?

Suddenly the full force of Malfoy's meaning caught up with her. Did Snape have a thing for younger women? Did Snape have a thing for _her_? Realistically, she had no reason to expect that Hermione-porn existed, but with magic, who knew? She had a sudden mental image of herself doing a striptease in the potions classroom to a _very_ appreciative audience. Ewwww... Except that it was sort of flattering. Wait, shouldn't she be afraid?

Thanks to the power of suggestion, now she was. She was a bound concubine—a _concubine_, in the twenty-first century, in England of all places!—and she'd read enough to know what that would entail. She prayed they'd splinch on the way home.

"Miss Granger?" Right, the sarcastic bastard was speaking again. Must try and listen. "Do hold still a moment."

They Apparated with a loud crack.

---

Severus tried to imagine what Hogsmeade would look like to someone who'd been away five years. Certainly it seemed the same to him. Shops had opened and closed, but the major landmarks were there, and it was an abysmally bright and sunny day. Looking again with his mind's eye focused on the Hogsmeade of five years ago, he noticed that Zonko's carried more dangerous supplies, and a shifty-looking wizard was selling what looked like curse tablets not far from the Hog's Head. The changes weren't all bad, he was forced to admit. Though the town's population was much decreased, those that remained were richer and better cared-for. The less upstanding citizens crept around more out of habit than of fear of getting caught. Not that much was illegal these days.

Miss Granger was looking around with amazement. Did she really think Voldemort would scorch the earth just because he could?

"This way," he said, and they started up the hill to Hogwarts.

---

Her first sight of Hogwarts could have been out of the rosiest parts of her memory. The sun broke through the clouds as they crested the first hill, and the school lay spread out before them in all its glory. She could see some changes—they'd added another Quidditch pitch and the greenhouses had been enlarged—but for the most part this was the Hogwarts she'd dreamed about for five colorless years. Part of her wanted to weep with joy at the reunion, and part of her was, curiously, angry that it seemed not to have suffered at all from Dumbledore's absence or Voldemort's new rule. She must have made some sound, or spoken aloud, because Snape chose that moment to speak to her. So much for pleasant memories.

"And why would the Dark Lord destroy this place, when he could use it instead for his own purposes?"

She found she had no answer. She sighed, and walked ahead of him down the hill, past Hagrid's hut, which was...empty? No, it was inhabited. There was a roaring fire inside, and—

"Charlie Weasley?" She couldn't have been more shocked if she'd tried. Charlie, looking up from the pair of dragonhide gloves he was mending, looked equally stunned.

"Hermione? Hermione Granger? What on earth are you doing here?"

That wasn't a question she really wanted to answer, so she countered with her own. "We all thought you'd been killed. How did you make it?"

He gave her an inscrutable look, then solemnly pushed up his left sleeve. The Dark Mark curled, sinister and hideous, around his forearm. She recoiled in horror, and the look on his face told her he had expected nothing less. 

"But—but—why?" she stammered.

"Sometimes there is no other choice. You made yours, and I made mine." Snape appeared beside her, and Charlie nodded. 

"Headmaster."

"Good day, Mister Weasley. I'll see you at seven."

Charlie turned away from her, and Snape propelled her forward. She couldn't help but feel she had made a grave error.

---

"Well," said Millicent, looking around the flat, "well, well, well."

Ron wished she would get over herself long enough to tell them something useful, but there was no sense in one-upping Harry on the Stupid Things I Did scale and actually saying something about it. Instead, he opted for action.

"Pack some things for the trip. No more than an overnight bag. And Albus, I know you have a wand, so bring that too." He turned to McGonagall and Harry. "You two will need to make some excuses for work. I don't expect we'll be back for a week even if we succeed, and if we fail—well, we'll be dead and it won't matter."

"Wait," Millicent said. "Potter, we'll need your expertise."

"Didn't think much of my expertise yesterday, did you?"

Ron sent an elbow into his ribs. "Don't be snide, she's doing us a favor."

Millicent seemed to find the whole exchange quite funny. "Yesterday you needed to be taught your place. Today, I'm choosing not to risk my contacts to help you."

Harry looked about ready to burst, so Ron clapped a hand over his mouth and said politely, "We'll be right back."

---

"I hate it when you do that."

"Do what?"

"Intervene. Treat me like a child."

"Look, I'm sorry. I didn't see any way around it, and keeping Millicent and her people happy is really important right now."

"Still..."

"I'm sorry. Alright, I'm sorry. Can we focus on a plan now?"

Harry sighed and began throwing clothes into a small backpack Hermione had bought for him with her first paycheck. Ron was right, he needed to focus. They had a friend to rescue, and he had a plane to fly.

The day after Ron had forced him to start looking for a job, he'd sat down and made a list of the things he could do. _Play Quidditch_ was at the top of the list, followed closely by _Fail to Save the World_. _Cook_ and _Clean_ were on there as well, but he hoped he'd be able to find something he liked better than those two—his memories of the Dursleys were still quite potent. Thinking a bit more, he'd started a fresh sheet and replaced _Play Quidditch_ with _Fly a Broomstick_, under which he wrote "good sense of balance" and "love being in the air", and _Catch Small Shiny Things_, which was followed by "good eyesight" and "fast reflexes". He crossed out _Fail to Save the World_ and wrote on the new sheet, "brave" and "good in a crisis". He then took a list of careers Ron had found in some school counselor's book and began to work down it. He had to look up a few of them—what the hell was manege anyway?—but for the most part he was able to cut it down by nearly two out of three. He was halfway through the Cs when it hit him. Loves being in the air, good sense of balance, good eyesight, fast reflexes...all he wanted to do was fly, and there was one easy way to start.

Dumbledore's connections had helped them convert their Galleons to pounds, so paying for lessons wasn't terribly difficult. For that matter, buying a plane once he'd earned his license hadn't made much of a dent, either. His instructor had been happy to pass a few clients his way, and now he had a small but enjoyable business.

He took a quick peek at his schedule, which only showed one appointment in the next two weeks—he'd cleared out some time for his ill-fated smuggling attempt—and made a quick phone call. Fortunately, Peter Mayfield, his instructor, had an opening for that same day, and he was able to give Mister Collabi's agent new arrangements. More than a few of his passengers used false names, and Hermione had laughed and laughed over that one. Honestly, it wasn't that funny that one had used the Latin for "crash" as a pseudonym. 

He sighed again, and slung the bag over his shoulder. Rescue mission time.


End file.
